My fingers, burrowing through the crack into a choke of sand, had touched upon the iron-bound corner of a box. They were all up and swarming about me directly. One by one, quite cavalier to each other in their eagerness to dive and feel, they exclaimed and fell back, Some people say that colours are indiscernible by moonlight. I can answer for the flush which suffused our rector’s cheek as he looked at Joshua. But it was Uncle Jenico who commanded the situation. “We must rope this lowest piece, and pull it away from the other,” he cried, full of bustle and excitement. “What a providential thought was this wrench of mine! Hey, my boys? Ha-ha!” It was brilliantly the obvious course, and at the word we were all scurrying to put it into execution, Uncle Jenico directing us in a perfect and quite lovable rapture of self-importance. He and I, when the rope had been readjusted to its new position, hurried to manipulate the machine, while the others remained to watch the result of our efforts on the huge pipe of masonry. We seized the spokes. “Right!” said my uncle, with a laugh of joyous confidence. Now, I don’t know if the first test had amounted to no more than a little soft extra persuasion applied to an already tottering article. I know only that _that_ success was not to be repeated. “Right!” said Uncle Jenico; and the wheel turned under our hands, tightened, and began to scream as before, only infinitely more distressfully. We strained our mightiest, putting our backs into it. “It gives, I think,” said Uncle Jenico, in a suffocating voice. And with the word, an explosive lash whistled by my ear, the machine bounded and pitched, and there were we rolling on the sand amidst a mad wreck of everything. We were neither of us hurt. Uncle Jenico sat up ruefully. Mr. Sant came running to us across the sand. “Anybody killed?” he panted, as he rushed up. Nobody, by God’s mercy! It was the nearest shave. If I had had a whisker, it would have been shorn off, I think. The rope had snapped like a piece of string, and we were right in the path of its recoil. “Anyhow, I suppose we moved the thing a little?” said Uncle Jenico. “Not an inch,” was the answer. “Eh!” cried my uncle. “I can’t understand. It must have severed itself on a sharp stone, I suppose.” “That was the case, without doubt,” said the clergyman, kindly. “Well, there’s nothing for us now but to take pick and shovel, and dig out the pith of the thing. It will take a little longer, that’s all.”